 Good afternoon, everyone. There was no White House COVID-19 call today, but there will be one next week. And as Commissioner Pichek will show you, the national data continues to show cases are slowing. I'd like to start this week by acknowledging that today is International Overdose Awareness Day. For 18 months, so much of our focus has been on the pandemic. But it's critical to remember long before COVID. And to this day, we're still confronted with the impacts of overdoses and the deaths that follow. Unfortunately, there's no denying that over the last year and a half, overdoses have increased. With all the stresses from COVID, barriers to treatment, businesses closing in the uncertainty of the past 18 months, people with substance use disorder have been impacted significantly. To those who suffer from addiction, I want you to know that help is waiting for you. There's currently no wait lists for medically assisted treatment, also called MAT. And we have many dedicated Vermonters who are here to help you overcome these challenges. Additionally, we have 163 distribution sites for Narcan through community programs, which can be found at Vermont HelpLink. I also want to thank our EMS professionals who are key to our efforts. So far this year, they've helped distribute over 17,000 doses of Narcan, which has saved lives. Vermont has been a national model in working to overcome the opioid epidemic. But we know we need to refocus in this area, because there's clearly much more to do. My team will continue to focus on getting Vermonters the support and stability they need. And in a few minutes, Secretary Smith, and Deputy Commissioner Doherty will talk more about some of the work being done in this area. Next, Vermont has passed yet another important milestone. 75% of children between the ages of 12 and 17 have received at least one dose. The first state in the nation to get there. We can repeat that. And we're eagerly awaiting FDA approval of the vaccine for kids under 12 and hope that will happen within the next month or so. It's important to acknowledge that the medical experts are telling us that COVID-19 is here to stay. But hopefully, it will be a future where COVID-19 could be another cold or flu we have to deal with, because vaccines have proven to be safe and effective in doing their job. So I'm confident Vermont's parents will step up when it's time. Next, I want to spend a few minutes putting Vermont's current situation into context. Because despite what you might see on Twitter, we're in a much better place than perhaps any other state, because vaccines have proven to be very effective at preventing cases and even more effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths. More specifically, as you know, over 85% of those eligible and 75% of our total population have at least one dose, as well as over 68% of our total population being fully vaccinated. And that number is increasing every day. As a result, we're better protected than any other state from Delta, and the data shows that. Also, we're hearing a lot about the CDC transmission map, which has all Vermont counties and the vast majority of counties across the country in a high or substantial transmission category. But as I pointed out last week, this one size fits all policy doesn't always paint an accurate picture for our rural state. So here's what the CDC map looks like in Vermont, using the numbers. In the last 14 days, during what we expect is nearly the peak of the Delta surge, the daily average for Essex County, which has been orange or red on the CDC map has been 0.9 cases per day, less than one case per day. In grand style, it's 2.1. In orange, it's 3.4. LaMoyal has four per day. In Addison, it's 4.2. In Caledonia, it's 4.7. In Orleans, it's 6.8. In Franklin, it's 7.1. Wyndham, 7.5. 9.2 for Windsor, 10.2 in Rutland, 10.6 in Bennington, 17.4 in Washington. And by far, the largest per day is our most populated county with our biggest city with 40.5 per day in Chattanooga County. Now keep in mind, these counties are in the same CDC category as counties in Florida with a per capita case rate that is 10 times higher than the highest case rate in Vermont. Most importantly, Vermont continues to have the lowest hospitalization rate in the United States. Again, if we had Florida's hospitalization rates, we'd have around 500 Vermonters hospitalized instead of 28. But it's not just Florida. If we had Connecticut's hospitalization rate, for example, who have the fifth best in the nation, we'd be talking about over 75 in the hospital instead of 28. So the message is clear. Get vaccinated because we proven they work. Unfortunately, the message that vaccines are doing exactly what they need to do seems to be getting lost. And some are not seeing how vital they are to making COVID-19 just another cold or flu that is circulating. So I hope folks hear loud and clear. Vaccines are still changing the game. And we need people to keep stepping up to get their shot and to get the booster when the time comes. Speaking of vaccines, as you may recall, a few weeks ago, I announced my team was moving forward with a vaccine requirement for state employees, including in corrections, the veterans home and the state psychiatric hospital. At the end of last week, we were pleased to reach an agreement with the corrections employees, which will become effective September one. This will affect about 1000 employees who will have to attest that they're fully vaccinated, or they will be required to test for COVID weekly and wear a mask while at work. We're now also considering expanding this requirement across state government and we'll have those discussions in the near future. Lastly, in a few minutes, Secretary French will provide an update on schools as the new year gets underway. But I wanted to take a moment to address the contention at some school board meetings over the past several weeks. The school boards in superintendents who are implementing masking policies are simply doing what the state at my direction is recommending. The attacks towards them are absolutely unacceptable. If they want to blame someone blame me. Now, it's good news and a reason for optimism that the data does not justify a state of emergency. But the fact remains that without one, the state can't unilaterally mandate these policies, which is exactly why we provided the advisory recommendations. Because this is what we believe schools should be doing at this point. So I want to be very clear to those who are upset at their school district. They're simply following the state's advice. They're doing exactly what I've asked them to do. So with that, I'll turn it over to Commissioner P check for this week's modeling presentation. Thank you very much, Governor and good afternoon, everybody. Taking a look first at national cases. We see that the trends that we've been seeing over the last 10 days to 15 days continue across the country with cases slowing down over the last seven days. The rate of increase was 4.1%. The seven day average just about 156,000 up from about 150,000 last week. And the in the states in which cases are plateauing or decreasing are some of those that were hit early, like we've talked about. But now some other states as well, like California and others. So again, on the national front, things are trending as we hoped they would. The rate of growth continues to decrease as you see on the next slide was at 14% growth rate last week grew 5% this week. So those trends are all moving in the right direction. Closer to home in New England, we saw that we had 5600 more cases this week across the region compared to last week. That meant that the growth rate stayed at about 10%. So about the same growth rate as last week. But again, the overall trend is showing that cases are slowing in the region. And here in Vermont, we had 174 more cases than last week. That was certainly an increase over the 40 that we saw the week prior. That meant that our rate as you'll see on the next slide on a week over week basis went up 22% compared to the 5% from last week. However, we do want to stress that when you look at the trend lines overall, the rate of decrease the rate of growth continues to decrease. And we're moving in that favorable direction on the next slide. You can see those growth rates looking at them on a seven day average day over day in terms of the change. And from July 10 through today, although there has been that more recent uptick, the rate, the trend again in the rate continues to point down toward zero. And obviously when we get to zero and below zero cases will start to drop. Looking again at the model we showed last week from the consortium of Yale, Harvard and Stanford universities that look at the reproduction rate across the country. They're now estimating that Vermont's reproduction rate is actually below one. So last week we were just at one. And again, if you have a reproduction rate above one, you anticipate that cases will start to rise in the near future. When it's below one, like they're forecasting here in Vermont, you anticipate cases will start to decrease in the very near future. That same group also shows an estimate of the detected and undetected rates across every state in the country. And for Vermont's, although our reported cases basically have not gone down yet, they've stayed relatively flat in terms of the growth rate. They do forecast that our infection rate has started to already decline. You can see that there on the blue line. Those are all of the infections in Vermont that aren't picked up by a reported test. So based on the timing of the reported cases based on the growth rate and the reported cases, they're estimating that our infection rate has actually already stopped started to decline. So again, this is something that will want to keep a very close eye on in the in the week and weeks ahead, particularly as colleges and K through 12 schools are starting back up in earnest. But we want to really see that materialize in our reported cases as well. Another thing to keep in mind when we're looking at our week over week case growth. This week we saw a considerable jump in the number of tests that were conducted across Vermont. So we had about 42,000 tests this week up from about 27,000 last week. A number of those tests were day one tests from UVM. But even when you remove those tests from the numbers, the testing did go up about 17.5%. So again, something to keep in mind when we think about the fact that we're picking up more cases because we're doing more testing. That's certainly a good thing. But it's something to keep in mind when we're looking at our rate of growth over the last week or so. And that increase in testing has meant that our positivity rate has gone down on a weekly basis when we look at the positivity rate over the last six or seven weeks. So again, another favorable sign that we're certainly doing sufficient testing in Vermont, we're picking up many of the cases that we want to pick up so that we can help stop spread of the virus. Wanted to look also at the county by county level. This is not a per capita analysis is a raw case count looking at the cases in each county on a seven day average. And as the governor said, you can notice that Chittenden County obviously has by and away the largest share of cases in the state. But look at their trend. That's the thing that is the most important. You see that the cases started to rise and did so for a number of weeks before leveling out about three or four weeks ago or two or three weeks ago really. And then it's been relatively flat and even trending down a little bit in Chittenden County. So that's certainly a very good sign. This were most of our cases in the state are from and many of the other counties are following a similar trajectory with the exception of Washington County, which has seen its cases rise over the last two or three weeks. So all of that means that the the CDC ensemble forecast still anticipates that cases will plateau and start to fall over the next week to two weeks. In terms of the forecast from this week compared last week compared to the actuals from this week. The numbers actually are pretty favorable. They're right sort of where the CDC ensemble had us in terms of an estimate. So again, we'll want to watch that closely and make sure that it materializes looking at the breakthrough case case rates compared to the not fully vaccinated or the fully vaccinated case rates. We continue to see a big stark difference between those that are fully vaccinated and those who are not fully vaccinated over the last 14 days. The rate of growth has gone up more considerably and that not fully vaccinated rate and the rate of growth has been smaller in that fully vaccinated case rate. And it does look like it wants to plateau there and slow down even more so. We also for the first time have a similar analysis for hospitalizations. So these are new hospital admissions. This is looking at the vaccinated and not fully vaccinated rates across Vermont. You can see that those who are not fully vaccinated have a much higher rate of hospitalization than those that are fully vaccinated. It's estimated that's about 6 times greater over this period that we've looked at which is from the beginning of July through August 23rd. So again, message is very clear. The vaccines are protecting people from infection, protecting people from hospitalization as well. And you can see that again on the next slide when we look at our raw number of hospitalizations that we've seen across the state. Over the last few days, they have appeared to stabilize. Another trend that we're seeing is more people that are unvaccinated are taking up admissions in the hospital. That number is now 72 percent of all people on average in the hospital over the last seven days were not fully vaccinated. Similarly, the trend is looking favorable on the ICU usage. That trend has clearly come down over the last five or six days. And similarly, the percentage of individuals who are not fully vaccinated continues to rise a little bit in the ICU at 56 percent of all people over the last seven days. Taking a look before we move on to some quick fatality analysis, looking at the restart for higher education. Last week, we were just about 90 percent of student body that that was fully vaccinated. This week, that number with the few more people recorded is up to 92 point three percent. That's with 14 of the 16 higher education institutions reporting. So again, we'll continue to update this over the next couple of weeks until all of the students have been accounted for. But certainly a very encouraging sign that 92.3 percent of all colleges across Vermont have a student body that's fully vaccinated. And when we look at what the week one numbers look like, 32 cases so far reported on college campuses out of about 10,000 tests that have been conducted. Similarly, looking at the long term care facility update, you can see that there are a few more long term care facility outbreaks added to the chart up to 104 in terms of a total as it relates to the outbreaks that are shown here. That's an increase of 52 compared to last week. And then turning lastly to the fatality analysis, looking at part of the Delta wave, the wave that hit Vermont and other places the most acutely, you can see that the fatality rates are considerably different across the country. Places like the Northeast with really high vaccination rates have fortunately have had very few fatalities relative to those other parts of the country that have had very low vaccination rates and very high cases, hospitalizations and deaths as well. Looking specifically at Vermont, you can see that so far in August, we have reported 16 fatalities. And then when you look at the age breakdown, you can see that just like previous previous times that we've seen fatalities, they've they've tended and trended to be older individuals. We're seeing that same case here. And also be mindful of how many cases we've reported in those different age groups through the month of August. So really a small percentage of those cases reported end up being a fatal case of COVID-19, which of course is very fortunate. Looking at our vaccination rates, Vermont added about 2,700 people to the vaccination rolls this week, up to 86.1 percent. When you look at the next slide, you can see that the seven day average actually dipped down a bit. Last week, we recorded about 3,000 new people starting vaccination. So the rate is still elevated, certainly compared to where it was in earlier in July, but the rate trended down a little bit this week. Looking at the CDC scorecard, do want to note that Hawaii is now at 86.2 percent. So Vermont is second to Hawaii on that metric, but on all other metrics, including the percent of our population fully vaccinated and the percent of our population that has one dose across the full population, Vermont continues to rank number one in the country. And then last but not least, as the governor said, just over the weekend, Vermont reached 75 percent of those 12 to 17 years old with at least one dose, the first state to do so. And certainly we're well ahead of many, many other states, even in New England, where there is a pretty high vaccination rate among this age group. So again, bodes well for our K through 12 system, at least for those students that are able to be vaccinated at the moment. So at this moment, I'll turn it over to Secretary French. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. Good afternoon. Most of our schools will be open as of this week. So I thought I'd provide an update on the opening of school in the context of this, our second year of the COVID-19 pandemic and also the impact of the Delta variant. As Commissioner Pichek highlighted in his presentation, the trends are looking better, but this is still a challenging time for schools to be opening. Vaccination is the major difference as compared to last year, however, but there's still a lot of community transmission going on as a result of the Delta variant. Contact tracing in our schools will continue to play a critical role in ensuring the safety of our schools in the coming months, which means there'll be times when classes or schools will need to close, but hopefully for shorter periods of time than last year. We recommended that schools require masks for all students and staff for the first 10 days of schools and continue to require masks for those under the age 12 in schools with low vaccination rates. As far as I know, only one district in the state has not adapted a masking requirement. Essentially, we have implemented a universal masking mandate in all of our schools. This is an important accomplishment that will ensure the safety of our students as they return to school. It is unfortunate that we have seen masking become a topic of political contention in our communities and at our school board meetings. Next to vaccination, masking is one of our most important mitigation strategies. We know mass work based on our experience with the virus last year. As we did last year, we will continue to make recommendations based on what works. School districts should continue to defer to the public health recommendations of the health department and the agency of education. If there is concern about state level recommendations at the local level, those concerns should be directed to our agencies. Local leaders following state recommendations should be supported in their decision making. As evidence by the high degree of adoption of our state mass recommendation, we can successfully leverage a state and local partnership to keep our schools safe. This type of cooperation and coordination will be necessary when a state of emergency is not needed. Our recommendation to require mass for the first 10 days of schools is tied to student vaccination rate of 80% in each school. After a rate of 80% has been reached among the eligible student population, mass are no longer required for eligible students and staff. Those that are not yet eligible for vaccination, including students under the age of 12 should be required to wear mass regardless of the vaccination rate in the school. Last Friday, we publish recommendations on how schools should determine the 80% vaccination rate. Our recommendation includes a model template form to obtain parental attestation and to ensure a consistent approach statewide. We also recommended a means for verifying vaccination by either showing a student's vaccination card or a copy of their vaccination record to a local school official such as a school nurse. Another key aspect of our health strategy for schools this year will include voluntary surveillance testing for all students and staff regardless of vaccination status. To my knowledge, Vermont is the only state that use surveillance testing consistently in schools last year. Surveillance testing like masks has proven to be an effective strategy to ensure the safety of our schools. Unlike last year, this year we are including students in the surveillance testing. This means we will be conducting a lot more testing which will no doubt lead to the identification of more cases. Let me repeat that. This means we will identify more cases in schools, many of which would not have been found because they are asymptomatic. This is not a bad thing since it helps us stop the spread of the virus in our communities. But it also means we need to look closely at the positivity rate going forward. To date, we have about three-fourths of our districts signed up for the testing and some started testing this week. I think it's been challenging for more districts to implement the testing this week at the same time they're opening schools. So I do expect participation to increase in the testing in the coming weeks. We're also working with districts to help them understand the new logistical procedures around the testing. For example, parental consent is required for the student participation and the contractor has changed some of the processes from last year. Lastly, we're in the process of designing the collection of several different types of data from school districts. We want to keep these collections as light as possible, but at the same time we have a need for more information to guide our decision-making. Last year we were interested in understanding the patterns of instruction in our schools. This resulted in a monthly survey to districts to understand the patterns of remote, in-person, or hybrid learning. Since our schools were largely in-person this year, we are now more interested in understanding the specific impact of the pandemic on the education of our students. As part of our recovery planning, we had anticipated last spring that these needs would fall into three broad categories, academics, social-emotional learning, and engagement. Now we want to understand these needs more specifically. For example, what are the specific areas of academic need? Are there patterns across grade levels or subject areas? This type of information will be useful in guiding the investment of federal dollars at the state level and in targeting support to school districts. We're also interested in monitoring the local adoption of state-level health recommendations. Since the state-level recommendations will not have the force of regulatory guidance this year, we need to be able to monitor to what extent local districts are following state recommendations, such as mask adoption and the implementation of our school vaccination rate recommendation. We also intend to do regular reporting on surveillance testing data, and we will continue to report on the number of cases of the virus in our schools. That concludes my update. I'll now turn it over to Secretary Smith. Thank you, Secretary French. Good afternoon, everyone. Before I run through the vaccination sites available this week, I want to cover a few other topics. First is an update on the COVID cases at Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport. Late last week, we had positive cases at five out of our six correctional facilities, most notably at the Newport Facility. Vermont DOC tested the entire facility last Friday from the testing the Department of Corrections is reporting 21 incarcerated individuals at the Newport Facility tested positive for COVID-19. So did one staff member who was not working at the facility at the time because they were already identified as a close contact of a prior positive. At Northern, there are now a total of 25 incarcerated individuals and seven staff who are COVID positive. The facility is on full lockdown, depending the results of facility-wide testing that happened yesterday. As you may know, starting tomorrow, staff at the Vermont Correctional Facilities as well as the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital, the Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residents and the Vermont Veteran Home are required to self-attest to their vaccination status. If an employee has not been vaccinated, they will be required to both to submit to regular testing as directed by the Department currently planned for twice per week and to wear the appropriate face covering at all times when inside the facility. Testing will be offered at all facilities. If they refuse, they will be subject to disciplinary action. This is necessary to protect the populations under their care. We encourage others that care for vulnerable populations to require vaccinations as well. Next, I want to turn to surveillance COVID testing in our schools that Secretary French just talked about. Out of our 51 supervisory unions, 47 are interested in conducting surveillance testing. That's a tremendous response for surveillance testing. And some have already begun testing as Secretary French has pointed out. We anticipate that all of the 47 supervisory unions will be up and running by the end of September. I also want to remind everyone that school-based vaccination clinics are open and will continue throughout the fall. It's a great opportunity to get your first and second dose. I especially want to encourage everyone ages 12 to 17. You'll need to get a parent or guardian's permission to get vaccinated. As you, as the governor has pointed out and as Commissioner Pichek has pointed out, we've been very, very successful in that age group. One last item I want to cover concerns what the governor mentioned, substance use, and the fact that today is Overdose Awareness Day. Deputy Health Commissioner Kelly Doherty will cover that in more detail. But I wanted to raise the issue as it relates to older Vermonters. Everyone is at risk for accidental overdose, including our seniors. As a result, the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living has worked with the support and services at home program to tailor accidental overdose prevention, messaging and education to older Vermonters throughout the state. This has included the importance of having Narcan on hand since I have mentioned overdoses can happen to anyone. Now let's turn to the vaccination rates. As of today, as Commissioner Pichek has pointed out, 86.1% of eligible Vermonters have received at least one dose of the vaccine. But more importantly, 76.9% of all eligible Vermonters are fully vaccinated. Clearly, we are well ahead of other states in the country. As you can walk in and get vaccinated at most local pharmacies, including those in grocery stores, you can also visit pharmacy locations at community health centers of Burlington, Northwestern Medical Center and Southwestern Vermont Medical Center. In addition to those options, here's what you'll find at the here's where you'll find the 37 pop up in school based clinics this week. Today, August 31st, Hazen Union High School in Hardwick, Springfield High School in Springfield, Manchester Elementary in Manchester, the Woodstock Farmers Market in Woodstock, Springfield Town Library in Springfield, the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction and the Bradford Psychiatric Associates in Rutland. Tomorrow, September 1st, St. Albans City Elementary School in St. Albans, Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction, Cavendish Fire Department in Cavendish Waterbury Ambulance in Waterbury Center and 1311 Berry Montpelier Road in Berlin. On Thursday, September 2nd, Birnbur and Burton Academy in Manchester, North Country Junior High School in Derby, Champlain Valley Fair again in Essex Junction, Healthcare and Rehabilitation Services in Hartford, Berry Town, EMS in Berry, Waterbury's Farmers Market in Waterbury. On Friday, September 3rd, the Newport Waterfront Plaza, the Morris Town Elementary School in Morris Town, Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, this Cambridge Rescue Station in Jeffersonville, the Quiche Balloon Festival in Quiche, the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction again, the Brattleboro Gallery Walk in Brattleboro and 1311 Berry Montpelier Road in Berlin. On Saturday, September 4th, King Arthur Baking Company in Norwich, Canaan High School in Canaan, Grand Isle Elementary School in Grand Isle, Grand Isle Sheriff's Department in Grand Isle, Stowe Community Church in Stowe, Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction, and the Bennington Fire Department in Bennington. On Sunday, September 5th, the Guilford Fair in Guilford Lake Region High School in Orleans, Spalding High School in Berry and the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction. Please take advantage of these opportunities to become vaccinated and get an additional dose if you are eligible for one, those with a compromised immune system. In the coming weeks, pending FDA approval and CDC guidance, we will transition to more mass vaccites to accommodate booster shots which are anticipated to begin after September 20th. I wish to emphasize something that the governor covered, vaccines. Vaccines work. Vaccines help you from getting the virus. And if you get it, they protect you from the worst health outcomes and possible deaths. Vaccines are the best protection against the virus. There is no doubt in my mind that our case numbers would look vastly different. And even our best in the nation, hospitalization and death data would improve if more Vermonters were vaccinated. Again, vaccines work. As you can see, we have tried to ensure that getting a vaccine is most convenient everywhere in Vermont. So please take advantage of getting your shot. You can find information about the COVID vaccination sites at the Health Department's website, which is healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. I'll now turn it over to Deputy Commissioner Doherty for an update on overdoses. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Smith. Good afternoon, everyone. Since March of 2020, we have seen a concerning increase in overdoses in our state as well as across the country. We've also seen an increase in the rate of opioid overdose related emergency department visits throughout Vermont. While we, of course, want to see the number of overdoses decrease, we are encouraged that many people are receiving the critical care and support that they need in an emergency department following an overdose. We've been working to increase the availability of recovery coaching services in emergency departments statewide along with rapid access to medication-assisted treatment for those who present to emergency departments. In addition, we are equipping first responders with the resources that they need to assist those who have overdosed or who otherwise exhibit signs of opioid use, including harm reduction training, naloxone leave behind kits, and other printed materials. Some other efforts that have been expanded during the COVID pandemic or have recently been implemented include harm reduction packs that we are distributing across the state that include naloxone or Narcan, fentanyl test strips, rescue breathing masks, and educational information. And these are distributed through multiple locations across the state, including the motels that have been used for general assistance housing, through partners in our probation and parole offices statewide, our syringe services programs, recovery centers, shelters serving those experiencing homelessness, and other social service organizations. We've also worked to include or to expand our mobile harm reduction and syringe service programs. These are available through three syringe service programs providing mobile exchanges to help meet the needs of Vermonters who are unable to access services through fixed site locations. We are also working to expand access to medication-assisted treatment through syringe service programs. We have launched the NoOD campaign, which is KNOWOD. And this campaign is designed to reach people who are at risk of an overdose and their loved ones and focuses on six steps to reduce harm and lower the risk of experiencing an overdose or dying from an overdose. These are never use alone. If you OD while you're alone, you could very well die. If you're using, go slow and start with a small amount of your drug to test its strength. Call 911 in the event that you were a witness to an overdose. And remember that Vermont's Good Samaritan Law protects those who call 911 in the event of an overdose. Use new syringes to reduce risk of infections and help protect vein health. Test for fentanyl. Fentanyl can be dangerous, so test with the test strips that we provide through the health department. We are seeing an increasing amount of fentanyl in our overdoses across the state. And carry naloxone or Narcan, which can reverse an overdose. More information about this campaign can be found at knowodvt.com. And then finally, in March of 2020, we launched Vermont Help Link, a centralized resource for information and resources related to substance use, including assistance in finding harm reduction services or finding treatment and recovery services for when one is ready to access them. Vermont Help Link is free and confidential and can be accessed by visiting vthelplink.org or calling 802-565-LINK to talk to someone directly. If you or someone you know may need or want these supports, please call or go online. Help is ready when and where you need it. And then let me also briefly address one more, but not in significant need if we are to bend the curve on substance use and addiction. Unfortunately, stigma associated with substance use disorders can create tremendous barriers for people in accessing treatment and other services. Our work acknowledges substance use disorders as a medical condition, an approach that ties in prevention, treatment, and recovery. Addressing stigma and therefore helping to reduce our substance use crisis also requires our communities and individuals to come together and learn, understand, become more compassionate and continue to support people on their path to successful recovery. As a department and a state, we are committed to providing the programs, supports, and information to change how we view substance use disorder in Vermont. With that, I will turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thank you and good afternoon. So we've been living with the Delta variant widespread here in Vermont for nearly two months now, changing the COVID-19 landscape for us once again. Delta is more contagious, which means more people are getting infected right now. A majority of these infections are among the unvaccinated. And without the protection of the vaccine, these Romaners are at higher risk of getting and spreading the virus to others. But those who are vaccinated are highly protected against severe illness, hospitalization, and death. This means the vaccines continue to do their job, protecting not only those who got vaccinated, but also those around them. And we do know that with Delta, there's still a finite chance to get infected if you're vaccinated. But if you do, the likelihood is still incredibly high that you will not have life-threatening disease. This is what vaccines are supposed to do, and why having a so-called breakthrough case is not a sign of vaccine failure or an excuse to not get vaccinated in the first place. If the majority of eligible Vermonters are vaccinated, then who is the virus going to come into contact with but a vaccinated person? Even if on a given day, a third of the positive tests for this highly contagious virus are in vaccinated Vermonters, this means the overall risk of one of the more than 438,000 fully vaccinated people being infected is still below 0.3%. Now, once again, remember what vaccines are doing. They help your body produce an immune response when it encounters the virus. This means waking up memory cells to produce antibodies and other types of cells called T cells to also take the battle to your bloodstream and to protect your organs, especially your lungs. They don't work as well or as quickly in your nasal mucus membranes when you first encounter the virus. This is why we now know that a vaccinated person can, for a very brief interval of time, develop infection in their nose and even transmit the virus to others. I wanna emphasize, vaccination makes this time period very brief. But this is the basis for the CDC's recommendation that in areas with substantial or high levels of transmission of virus, masking indoors is appropriate regardless of your vaccine status. And at this time in our experience with COVID-19, I agree with this guidance, knowing we still have members of our population who are immunocompromised, who are younger children and not yet eligible for the vaccine or who live or spend a lot of time in schools, long-term care facilities or other congregate settings. Because that is what masks are supposed to do, mostly protect others and also to protect ourselves. So when I recommend masking in indoor public spaces, what am I saying? First, like we've been saying all along, you should assess your own risk and how much risk you take on in your daily activities. That could be where you are, who you're with, how crowded the place is and whether there are rules that are already set by the event or the business. As I speak now, I'm in an auditorium that can hold several hundred people. Today it has less than 20 people in the room, very spaced out. I happen to know that my colleagues here are all vaccinated, the room is spacious and well ventilated. Very different than if I was giving a talk here attended by the general public and it was a full house or if I was in a busy shopping space. So I'm asking homeowners to use common sense and to make informed choices. Every person in every situation is unique. And as I always say, respect other people's decisions and don't be judgmental. The bottom line is, whatever we do to reduce transmission now will help reduce the amount of virus in our communities as it continues looking for any chance it can to spread from person to person. The take home message is reducing transmission can lower the chances of seeing cases in those long-term care facilities where we have so many of our most vulnerable in our correctional facilities in healthcare facilities, childcare, workplaces and now that school is back in session in schools as well. But remember, vaccination is still our number one strategy because it is the best defense against the virus. We can see the impact of vaccination in an analysis of our long-term care facility data. There have been 120 cases in these facilities and you saw the table that Commissioner Pichak had up before. These include outbreaks and other cases reported in the last 14 days. 80 of them were in residence, 78 were fully vaccinated. There were sadly four deaths. Even a single death is too many. But currently, this is a vastly improved situation from previous surges during the pandemic where the infections spread very rapidly through the facilities and many deaths occurred over the ensuing days and weeks. But as we work to keep our kids in school, keep workplaces open and protect our most vulnerable, we can also use those same strategies that have helped before when transmission was high. Wearing masks indoors, thinking about what kind of gatherings might be safe, keeping physical distances when needed, considering travel plans. And if you're sick, most importantly, staying home and getting tested. And of course, you can get all the guidance you need on our website at healthvermont.gov slash COVID-19. If you do get tested and are positive, please make sure to follow the appropriate guidance as soon as you get your result. You don't need to wait to hear from us to take action. Begin your isolation period, notify your close contacts so they can take action too, quarantining and testing if necessary. If you think you are a close contact, you can also look for the same guidance. You kind of know the prevention steps by now and they're on our website if you need a refresher. Your actions and continued participation in our efforts will help stop further spread of COVID-19 as quickly as possible. I'm gonna close with a comment about boosters since there is so much talk about them. Some have anticipation about them. Others are a bit skeptical. Is this a political issue for the Biden administration? Is it merely a financial win for the companies? Is it ethical to give Americans boosters while the rest of the world has a 15% vaccination rate at best? Let's step back for a second. Ultimately, boosters must be shown to be important because they provide added benefit without significant risk. They must protect you from all of those most severe outcomes just like your current doses of vaccines are doing now. But presumably might need help in continuing to do so after a certain number of months. We are closely watching the data from studies in people and how the FDA rates them. And then what the Advisory Council on Immunization Practices and subsequently the CDC have to say to guide the medical community. This is the process that's now underway and that will unfold in just the next several weeks. As we have throughout the pandemic, we'll keep everyone highly informed as this develops. Governor. Thank you, Dr. Levine. I'll now open it up to questions. I'm starting to focus on the room for business leaders and nonprofits about the subject of masking. I know you had referenced the Venetians who were looking to do something city-wide with masking at last week's press conference. Where would you stand if the city of Borough didn't want to do something? Well, it depends whether they're providing guidance or they're mandating it for private businesses. And there's quite a difference. They don't have the authority to do so. We don't have the authority to do so either without the state of emergency. So the same would hold true. But again, providing guidance to businesses as they have done in Brattleboro at this point in time, perfectly acceptable and reasonable and promoted. Tell us, can we know how many schools are now seeing positive cases in the states since reopening? How many separate schools and do we have a total number of cases? I don't have that, Secretary French. Yeah, thanks, Stuart. We don't. I mean, really this week is the first week that most schools will be open. So those patterns are still emerging. We did have Twinfield and East Montpelier in particular. So we're working closely with them. And in particular, with our contact tracing, we want to sort of debrief with the districts to understand what the patterns are. I do expect this year that initially anyway, we'll see some instability in the primary grades, the younger grades, the older grades. As was previously cited in the press conference, we have a fairly high vaccination rate. And our contact tracing protocol does not require a quarantine for asymptomatic individuals who are vaccinated. So we'll see a lot less school closure at the high school level in particular this year. But that's something with still the patterns aren't clear yet and we'll be digging into the data in the coming days. Do you know in the Twinfield and East Montpelier cases of this, what can we expect in terms of remote learning during this process? How long will this last a long time? Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, it's important to note that last year under the state of emergency, we were able to impart some flexibility to districts to count remote learning days as student attendance days. There's a minimum number of days in the law. That's not the case this year. So again, in these initial situations, it's in the case of Twinfield, for example, I believe they had fewer than 50% of their students shifting to remote. So that kind of situation, the school as a whole would still count that as a session day for attendance. But in the case of East Montpelier where the whole school goes remote, that necessarily does not qualify as an attendance day. So unless there's some provision made through a waiver, what have you, they would have to make that day up. So we'll get into that as we better understand the patterns. The waiver provision for attendance is something that the state board holds. Last year they gave me that authority. That's probably something I will ask them to do again. And I'll be again working very closely with the health department contact tracing team to understand to what extent the schools are following those recommendations from the contact tracers. Can I ask about the scheduling for the booster shot Secretary Smith who wanted to start on September 20th? I believe at mass sites, is this going to look like the original rollout? Is that a term date? Like eight months, given the within the month that you were originally back then? Yeah, there's a lot in play here. Obviously we still have to get FDA and CDC sort of guidance and approval on that date. That's a tentative date based upon what the federal government has given us. But what we're planning to do, Stuart, is sort of do everything that we did initially. Healthcare workers, long-term care facilities, and then roll into the mass sites right after that. So I would anticipate that you will start seeing sort of the rolling aspect of it, healthcare providers providing their employees, their booster shot, pharmacies providing booster shots for long-term care facilities, and then us through a variety of means working with the National Guard and EMS to provide booster shots at mass vaccination sites for those that are right around eight months in time elapsed from their original vaccine. You get the same shot you got originally? You'll get the same shot you got originally. We're recommending that. And just to add, the immunocompromised have been receiving the third shot as we speak. So that's been continuing. Now, Governor, your reaction to the pull-out in Afghanistan now that it's over? Well, I don't think it's over in some respects. As I had stated originally, I agreed with the president in terms of ending this unwinnable war. And it was just how we conducted the evacuation. And it certainly hasn't gone as expected. I think it's unfortunate from my standpoint to leave Americans there at this point. We still had another day to go, but I'm not on the ground, and I don't make those decisions. I can only sit back and give my opinion, but I think it's just unfortunate to leave. Those who've helped us, as well as those who protected us and Americans there on the ground. Coherent explanation about the Northern Border Policy? No, nothing yet. I think they've had their hands full. And again, we're still waiting for a response from the letter we sent to them from I think it was 10 governors and have not heard anything yet. What do you make of that? I think they're busy. I think they're busy. And I don't believe it's something they want to deal with right now. Excuse me, we'll move to the phone. Starting with Lisa Raffke, the Associated Press. Thank you. This is a question about correction. This is Secretary Schmidt. What percentage of the incarcerated population is vaccinated? At least around 80% of the total incarcerated population is vaccinated. I'll get you the precise number. And it's about the same for staff as well. A little less, around 79% for staff. Okay. And then, about likely to change with the new role. And then, the Secretary of Friends, you mentioned that there was one school district who does not have a mass mandate. Which one is that? I believe the Canaan School District School Board voted not to enact a mandate. What district is this school? It's the school district and they only have one school. Okay. Thank you. Peter Hirschfeld, VPR. Thank you for listening. I didn't really use this question, so I hope I'm not repeating. But Dr. Levine, a little before, at BT Digger, reported on a letter that 91 of your employees sent to you outlining their concern with the Ear Department's approach to the issue of messages or asking in the words. What are you going to talk about? Whether or not that letter affected the way you view the situation. And what do you want to make of the differences of opinion within the Department of Dagger and this public element? Sure, thanks for that question. I would say there are no differences of opinion within the Department of Health. We rely on our infectious disease, Epi Division, to do a lot of work during a pandemic. And they've been working pretty darn hard. They come up with appropriate recommendations. And I would not say that there's any contentiousness about that by any means. However, during a pandemic, there are a lot more factors that go into major decisions that are made. Public health recommendations are a core part of that. But there are many other decisions across all sectors of state government that are influenced by a whole host of factors, whether they're economic, whether they're the ability of the population to be able to do something that we might prescribe in terms of a behavior change. We look at mental health. We look at a whole host of factors. And really, my letter back to them just tried to convey the sense that we don't operate in a vacuum. We are not the ones who are in total control of everything that happens during the pandemic. It's a very collaborative and deliberative process that everyone is involved in at all levels in state government. And the fact of the matter is, there are many issues that are not simple yes-noes and simple decisions that need to be made. And we really thought that just to enlighten them on that aspect of things was very important. With regard to the influence that anything they've written has had on me, clearly their recommendations are fundamental public health recommendations that we were pretty aligned with anyways. I think my concerns today really are related to making sure that our communities are as safe as possible and making sure that we can do everything possible to control the level of virus that's possibly able to be transmitted from one person to another in our communities. Again, with the greater overall goal of protecting the schools so that we can continue to have in-person learning as a priority for the state. Protecting our long-term care facilities, our correctional facilities, our other vulnerable populations. Would we see less transmission of COVID-19 in the state if everybody wore a mask when they were indoors? Well, that would be a nice outcome. I can't say that masks, just like vaccines are not 100% effective. I can't say the masks are 100% effective, but both of these strategies are very strong strategies. One is a primary strategy vaccination that is the best defense and the other is probably the best mitigation strategy at a time when there's transmission occurring of a virus that is easily transmissible and contagious like this one. So I would hope that we will see the impact of that as just another factor. By the way, we should recognize that we've all been out and about. I hope at this point there's no stay at home policy. And I'm sure many of you are seeing what I'm seeing, which is people are doing appropriate things in appropriate settings quite often. So think about the times you've been into a store or gone to an event or what have you. And if you've seen masking, if you've seen people behaving in a way that shows that they're trying to take some sense of personal responsibility. So I would think that we would see some impact of their behaviors prior to today for sure. And perhaps they account for some of that decrease in the growth rate of cases that Commissioner Pchak showed earlier. And this will be my last follow-up, I apologize. What is stopping you right now from publicly and strongly as your employees have asked, recommend the universal masking indoors? I thought I just did recommend masking indoors. I did not mandate it. I were not under a state of emergency, but I did recommend masking indoors. Okay, thank you. Lisa Loomis, the value reporter. Good afternoon. A couple of quick questions. What are the turnaround times for tests right now? Secretary Smith. Lisa, I'll have to get back to you with it. We do monitor that. That's the only thing I didn't bring with me today in terms of the turnaround time. It has been averaging 1.2 days, but I will double check. I know that it has been happening around at least up to a week ago, about 24 hours as we move forward. And if you, you know, there are some labs out there that are longer. Most of the labs that the state uses is relatively quick turnaround. If you're using a private provider and you're using another lab, I have a list of labs in the turnaround times that those labs are. It may be different than what the state is using for labs. Okay, great. I would look forward to what I could see that list. Okay. Okay. And then I'm still not sure who knows the answer to this question. What percentage of state employees are back in their work sites? The opposite. Secretary Young, are you on the line? I am, Governor. We do not have that data. We have it somewhat anecdotally at the department level, but we have a policy in place now for anyone who would like to return to the workforce. They do so to the work site. And then we are now starting to implement as of tomorrow a more formal return to the work site, remote telework program. And at that time, we will be collecting data as every individual employee decides whether they want to apply for some remote work program. That will be one of the pieces of data that we will collect. As you know, we went back to a remote work situation in March of 2020 on a very quick basis. And we did not collect data around who was in and who was out, except off the department level. Got it. And then finally a question for Commissioner Pichek if I'm right. Could you please explain more about your slide number 10 that's in this slide deck? It is the estimated versus the expected COVID-19 cases. And can you talk a little more about what the fitted case concierge is and estimated two cases? It was seen that we had had a huge asymptomatic undetected surge of estimated two cases. Yeah, Lisa, that, so thanks for the question. So that's right. I mean, that delta there, that difference is exactly that it's talking about the infections that are in our community that go unreported because they're asymptomatic or maybe someone had light symptoms and didn't get tested or they didn't get tested for whatever reason. So we've seen that throughout the pandemic, particularly when cases are rising and the testing hasn't caught up with it. So that is the same in other states as well. There's always been basically anywhere between a three to four times difference between what is reported and what the estimates are for what the infected rate is. So the difference between the fitted rate and the infection rate, obviously there's the reported cases. The fitted rate basically looks at the reported cases, looks at the growth rate and then makes an estimate as to what the trend is. It also goes and looks at the infected number, the total number and makes an assumption about what its growth rate is as well. So basically when you put that all together, what it's saying is based on the number of cases we've seen, based on the growth rate in the last two to three weeks, it's anticipating that the infection rate has fallen and that our reported cases will soon fall as well. So it's the leading indicator? Yeah, again, it is a model, but it is, you know, so I would usually say leading indicator based on data, but this is a model based on data. Okay, great. Thank you very much for that clarification. We are Angle Smith, BT Digger. Hi, thanks for Dr. Hussain, but I feel free whoever needs to answer it. I wanted to know if you can give us the total number of coronavirus cases in long-term care facilities with breakdown for staff and residents, like right now. I believe the number is 120 and 80 are in residents, 40 are in staff. Civilization, as a result of any of these cases? Less than a handful. Okay, thank you. And the other question that I have is about the opioid ER visit. You've mentioned that ER visit increased for opioids. Like what's the volume of increase? Like what was the baseline and what's the increase now? So I don't have those numbers in front of me, but I know that the rate, the three-year average rate was in the 20s per 100,000. And I might have to get back to you on specifics. It's now up to around 31.3. So we think that ER visits definitely went down during COVID because people were avoiding the hospital and we think that they're just bouncing back up now, although the increase is relative to the three-year average. So it is reflective of an increase even pre-COVID. But I can certainly get you those exact numbers. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Tim McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine. Hi, Governor. We're getting feedback that businesses are not mandating vaccination because they're concerned about losing employees that you know that the workforce would be concerned. What is your position on mandating vaccines in the workplace? What would you tell these companies? Well, again, we think vaccines have proven to be effective and safe and they work. And over the long period of time, they will save and the number of employees may be out due to illness, due to the infection, and maybe even permanently out. So we think the risk is something that should be considered. We, as I said before, we have made great strides with the state hospital as well as the corrections and the other facility. But we're considering it for the overall enterprise and because we think it's a good idea. And the sooner that we can get more people vaccinated and mass, the better off we're going to be in the future throughout the country, but certainly for Vermont as well. Well, you can understand, I'm sure, these private businesses that are desperate for workers concerned about even losing maybe even just a couple of employees because they don't want to get vaccinated. Well, maybe they should just give them some choices, maybe some incentives as well, but a choice of, as we did with the corrections employees, they either are vaccinated or they have to be tested weekly and wear a mask. Tom Davis, Compass Vermont. Thanks, Jason. Governor, as you said, multiple times on these conferences, you said, what prohibits you from mandating masks in schools has been the need to declare a state of emergency. If that was not the roadblock, would you mandate that also? Well, we provided guidance that is in effect what we think is best for our schools. So in this situation, we feel that it's best for our kids, particularly those under 12 to be fully massed and for everyone until we reach a certain level. So if we had it in place, we probably would talk it over and consider that, but all likelihood we would, but we can't be in a perpetual state of emergency. It's just, it's not conducive to good government and we aren't in a state of emergency. We've been through this for 18 months now. We have somewhat of a playbook. We know what works and we're going to have to deal with this for probably years to come. So the sooner we all pick up our game, so to speak, and put into place policies and procedures that will help mitigate this, the better off we're going to be. I argue that if they're going into schools where masks aren't being dated, that is a state of emergency. It puts them in a very difficult position. They believe in the science and they've done, their homework and gotten their back, excuse me, their vacations and also that they are masking. I was just curious if you discussed, I mean one of the things that's part of those powers of state of emergency is your ability to declare state of emergency within this entire state or any portion or portion of the state. What would keep you from just going ahead and declaring a state of emergency in all schools and mandating masks there? Well, we would have to declare a state of emergency overall in order to impose that. But let's go back again. I think what we talked about earlier was there's only one school, one school, one school district, one and the same Canaan, who is not imposing the guidance. So I don't, I think we're quibbling about nothing at this point. If everyone has put into place a masking requirement for their schools, then it's in effect mandatory. Joseph Gresser, the Barton Chronicle. Joseph Gresser. All right, we'll move to Guy Page from our Daily Chronicle. Governor, you say parents unhappy with local school boards should blame you, but you've also said that your recommendations are advisory and that the final decision is up to the school boards. So are these advisory guidelines from the state somehow kind of less than really advisory? No, I mean they're advisory. It's what we think should be done. I don't think it's fair to put the school board members who are many unpaid volunteering their time to be treated with undue conflict as they are. I mean they didn't sign up for that. Treating others with respect and civility I think is something that I've tried to promote throughout my entire political career, but if they are so inclined to take out their anger on someone, blame me. Don't blame the school board members. They don't deserve it. And you have the other ones who are adopting the policy. Yes, through our urging. Yes. Okay. Commissioner Levine, I'm sorry, Levine said he'll be watching the data on the impact of vaccination going forward. Are either you or he concerned that OSHA, the federal workplace livestock group, has told employers that they do not need to collect employee adverse reactions in an effort to stimulate workplace vaccination mandates. It seems to me that there's some very important data that just may not be available without that. I'm not sure I'm completely following this, but Dr. Levine, if you can answer. Yeah, I'm following a governor from a different angle, which is that I'm not really concerned if an employee tells an employer about an adverse effect, but it would be nice if they either on their own told the adverse effect reporting system for vaccines, VAERS, or if they told their healthcare provider, and they would then assess that and also enter it as a potential adverse effect. So I'm not sure I'm answering your question, Guy, but that's the flow of events I'd like to see. You're saying VAERS is a good place to go to if you have a concern about an adverse experience. It's a good place and it's an essential place because we would never learn about any possible adverse effects if we didn't have them reported widely. That's where we learned about myocarditis, for instance, with the mRNA vaccines. And the reality is now we've got more data from research on myocarditis and we find that the rate of myocarditis from the vaccine is really pales in comparison to the rate of myocarditis from getting COVID itself. So it's helpful to know from a reporting system that it happens and now we can put that in the context and realize that you really have a lot of benefit from getting the vaccine for that particular effect. I go with a lot bigger. I believe this is going to be mostly for Dr. Levine. I've heard from a few school administration officials and experts expressing concern about the delay in reporting data on cases in school. They say that since the Department of Health isn't really going to be publishing that data until mid-September when districts are already going to be getting ready to unmask, those districts don't have enough data to rely on saying whether unmasking is going to be safe, whether Delta variant is having an effect on cases in schools and also just to kind of generally plan for different mitigation strategies as the duration of all. What do you say for those districts who might feel kind of a lack of confidence in following these guidelines when they don't have the data to show that they're safe? Hi Erin, this is Secretary French. I thought I'd jump in on this. We are prepared to do the same reporting we did last year. It worked very effectively. I don't think the reporting was necessarily complete on that because the districts have actionable data immediately upon contacting or connecting with the contact tracers. So really the function of the state reporting portal is for the broader public. It's not really actionable data that's used at the local level or even between the agencies and the departments working with school districts closely. That's happening literally within hours after reporting cases. But the district might have information about cases in their own districts, but they don't have a general sense of how cases outbreaks and transmission are occurring in schools without data from the state that's compiled and analyzed. Perhaps with that, again, that wouldn't necessarily influence their local decision making. And what we found last year through our extensive reporting is that the cases in schools are really a reflection of the cases in the communities. So we are as you know, reporting extensively on the patterns of the virus in the communities. So we do our best to provide that to school districts. And I know Dr. Leen, his team does that. I do it on a weekly basis with superintendents. So I think, you know, we've done a good job of providing them sort of that, if you will, that tactical awareness of what's going on around them. Oh, one could argue that last year was a different situation because we didn't have the Delta variant. We don't necessarily understand how the Delta variant could change the instances of in-school transmission at this point. Oh, absolutely. Last year is totally different. And I would argue the primary difference is vaccination. You know, particularly as we heard today with 75% of the eligible post-student population being vaccinated, that's gonna have a significant impact on transmission but also on how we approach contact tracing. Just to hear if you have anything in the data, you know, when it comes out in a few weeks, what would it take for the department of education or the agency of education or the state in general to consider stricter guidance or further guidance for schools related to masking, vaccination rate or other kind of measures to mitigate further cases? Yeah, sure. I mean, we, you know, we monitor the data very closely. And as we demonstrated previously, we won't hesitate to enact further recommendations if necessary. But you don't have kind of an up-bench mark or something specific that you're looking for that would lead to further mitigation tracking? That's correct. I mean, last year, as you know, we used sort of four basic guardrail measures, but one of the reasons I think we were so successful last year is that we do have a very close partnership with our school districts. So we look at those broader measures, but we also have a good sense of what they're dealing with on a practical level at any given moment at the local school district level. That's true, but if you look at the local district level and decide to close down a district, it sounds like they don't really have a plan for transitioning to remote learning at this point because they have to separately apply for a waiver and don't have a guarantee that they will be supported in switching to remote learning. Yeah, well, we can talk more about this made perhaps offline, but the waiver provisions that we have currently don't even become available till February under our regulations. So that nothing prevents them from now with addressing the immediate issues if we provide them direct support on that. And I think we're all finding our way, particularly with this peak of the Delta variant of how to proceed, but we'll continue to provide extensive support to our districts and welcome the opportunity to have that dialogue with them on these issues. So you'd recommend that a district if necessary should close down, but it wouldn't have a guarantee that they can switch to remote learning without consequences for its educational calendar and stuff like that? Well, the recommendation as it was last year is that they should strongly follow the recommendations from the contact tracers who will assess the risk and that doesn't always lead to, I would be very surprised, honestly, to see a whole district recommended to shut down temporarily, but certainly we will, I think particularly at the primary grades, see some of that. But again, the way the regulations described as long as 50% or some of the students are in-person, then the district will not have to worry about the attendance regulations. But the priority right now is to get school open. And I will say from anecdotal conversations I've had with teachers and principals in schools across the state that school opening's going very well so far and people are really excited to be back in the classroom. And we'll continue to pay attention to the trends and the data and do the reporting for the broader public interest. But I think again, we've demonstrated that capacity last year and we'll continue to stay committed to the success of our schools this year as well. Welcome. And Barbara, Newport Daily Express. Good afternoon. This first question might be directed to Dr. Levine. What is the percentage of the incarcerated population from last year has been vaccinated and what is the percentage of the fat? Secretary Smith may have that. Thanks, Ed. This is a question I answered earlier about 80% of those who have been offered a vaccination currently in DOC facilities have been vaccinated. Now, we have detainees that come in and out and those are not included, but those that are in our facilities incarcerated. So about 80%, about 79% of total staff eligible to receive the vaccination have been vaccinated. Do you know how many individuals whose test is positive have already been vaccinated? You mean total across the system or in the Newport facility? The Newport facility. Yeah, I don't have those numbers in front of me, but I'll try to track them down for you. Okay. And the other question I have, again, you talked with me, which is there was a peer study in Belgium that determined that Moderna has a higher antibody levels, dramatically higher than Pfizer does, with knowing that change in strategy in terms of which vaccine that you'll be using moving forward? No, that's a really good question. I'm familiar with the study. It just came out. Don't believe it's been peer reviewed yet. So put that caveat there. But at the same time, there's a difference between looking at antibody levels and then looking at what happens to people themselves. So we have to be very careful to translate that into the experience of people. Now, I always get asked which of the vaccines that we're using in our country have the higher rate of breakthrough cases. And we've covered this in a couple of press conferences. The vaccine that the smallest number of Ramoners has received is Johnson and Johnson. And it turns out to have a little higher rate of breakthrough cases than others. But I'm emphasizing that the others have such huge numbers of people who've gotten the vaccine, making it a little hard to parse out all that data. With regard to the other two vaccines, which are the messenger RNA vaccines, the Pfizer performed in between and the Moderna performed the best with regard to your likelihood of avoiding a breakthrough case. So that does indirectly support the study you're talking about. But the reality is, again, these are all excellent vaccines. Breakthrough cases are in the range of a quarter of 1% during this Delta surge here. And we shouldn't probably use that as a major criteria for what we're going to choose to do or not do in future planning or in future decision-making. These are all excellent vaccines. One of them has been fully approved. The others will follow soon after. Anne Wallace Allen, seven days. Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm wondering why Washington County's rate is so much higher than that of the rest of the state. Is it just due to the school outbreak, or is there something else going on? I don't think it has anything to do with the outbreak. I think East Montpelier had two students that had positive cases. So I don't think it has anything to do with the schools. Dr. Levine. Yeah, that's how it actually has to do. Dr. Levine or Commissioner Pichek, do you have any other information? So this has nothing to do with the schools. You're just talking in general across the communities? The county? Well, just from that. Yeah, so I am aware of several outbreaks in that county, but I'm not certain that would explain the entire change in that graph since it was so much different than the rest of the state. So a hypothesis would be several of those outbreaks were highly meaningful and that caused all the data change, but we'd have to actually drill down a little to give you that full assessment. So right now, consider it a hypothesis. That several of the outbreaks that we noticed in the county are driving that entire growth of cases. How will we all know or how will public health people decide when it's an endemic? When this is an endemic and it's not an endemic? Yeah, that's a great question, because that is where we think we're going. We meaning the human race, not just Vermont. We clearly aren't going to extinction of this virus. So it is going to settle out in a place where we have to sort of just live with it like we live with common cold viruses, flu viruses, et cetera. So the Delta variant threw a little monkey wrench into that whole thing, because if you would talk to us earlier in the summer, and if nothing else was going on around the world, I would have thought that we're heading in that direction after a year and a half. But clearly Delta became a major worldwide event. But as you've seen, it's kind of passed through many populations and has decreased in all those locations to a significant but not complete degree yet. Where at the level of the CDC, there are a number of other variants that are being followed around the world. None of them have yet become prominent, but they're under great observation. What happens when you call something endemic is it just sort of keeps existing at a level where we see a number of cases per year, we see a number of hospitalizations, a number of deaths, but they become sort of part of the fabric of our human existence. It's a little early to say we're there yet. I think what will bring us closer to that will be when our country does have as wonderful a vaccination rate as the Northeast does, and when the rest of the world and whole continents like Africa increase their rate of vaccination from 2% or 15% up to closer to where we are in the United States. So it's gonna take quite some time. Because as we said before, the more often virus is present in populations without vaccine and the more often people can transmit it to one another, more often mutations occur and some of these varying strains continue. So far be it from me from giving you a timeline on when we get to endemicity. Oh God, no, I wouldn't want that to be your plan for the future. I mean, look where we were before Delta. We were pretty much like very comfortable and things were going well. We had a great vaccine rate. We didn't have a lot of virus being reported and people were living the lives that they wanted to always live before the pandemic. I would think that after Delta, we could also get back to that level. Keep in mind that if you just used as your one parameter the CDC map, it's only in the orange and red places where the masking becomes as essential as you get down to more moderate transmission at yellow or very low transmission at blue that doesn't necessarily have to be a consideration at those points in time. So the goal is whenever in ensuing weeks and months we get down to those colors and nothing else happens because of worldwide action or anything and we're able to try to get back to that kind of lifestyle. I would hate to think that the whole future is gonna be frequent return to all of the mitigation strategies periodically. Then we clearly would understand we wouldn't have reached an endemic state yet but I'm thinking we're gonna get there faster than that. Andrew McGregor, Caledonian record. Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. Governor, you addressed this topic a bit earlier in terms of supporting vaccine mandates. I'm curious, do you or would you support local school districts adopting a vaccination requirement for school faculty and staff? Yeah, I think, again, I think it's a good idea. And I think that we've proven that by what we've done with corrections and the agreement we came with them either vaccinations or masking and testing. So, yes. And so absent a bit of vaccine mandate in this context, I have a question about privacy. There was a recent report from the CDC about an unvaccinated elementary school teacher in California that infected half of the class. Should families, especially those with children too young for vaccination, be entitled to know the vaccination status of their child's teaching? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's a legal question has to do with HIPAA as well. And I'm just not sure we have the answer to that at this point in time. But strictly from a common sense standpoint, I would think that people should be more transparent about whether they've been vaccinated or not. And if they aren't vaccinated, they should take precautions themselves to protect others. Michael Doherty and Vermont Digger. Thanks, Jason. Question for the governor specifically. This today in Dr. Levine's remarks was the first time we've heard someone as this podium stand up and endorse the CDC recommendations about universal indoor masking. And I want to hear from you. Do you agree with Dr. Levine? What Dr. Levine said that this should be taking place in these counties with substantial or high spread? Yeah, I might disagree with you a bit about your characterization. I stood at this podium probably two weeks ago and we talked about masking. And I said, you have to assess your situation. You have to take some personal responsibility. You might want to mask. I think it's a good idea. Those are all things that we've been saying all along. It hasn't been reported that way, but I think that this message that Dr. Levine delivered today is no different than what we've been saying over the last two, three weeks. I think there's an important distinction here. You've repeatedly used terms like personal choice. What the CDC is recommending is that anyone, even vaccinated people, wear masks in indoor public settings. And right now you can spill on the Health Department website that says to consider wearing a mask if you have a special risk category. I think there's a really important distinction there. And I wonder what is stopping you from saying yes, we should follow these CDC recommendations to the letter. Because I think what we've described is using, and I think Dr. Levine had talked about this earlier, using this platform, this auditorium as an example, per the CDC guidelines, everyone in here should be masked, correct? So we're saying in this situation, using common sense, being a big room where it holds hundreds of people with high ceilings and great ventilation and knowing most of the people in here are vaccinated, we don't feel it's necessary to wear masks. So I'm saying we should promote the use of masks during times when it's necessary, if you're assessing your situation, taking some personal responsibility, going to a concert where there's hundreds of people, inside you might want to wear a mask. That's a good idea. And I think that we need to continue to take that approach as we move forward from pandemic to endemic. And I think Dr. Levine explained that earlier. So if you go to the letter of the law of the guidance of the CDC, again, everyone in here would be masked, and I don't think it's necessary. What about on testing? So far the Vermont Department of Health recommendations have differed from the CDC on whether vaccinated people who have an exposure to someone with a positive case should get tested. The Department of Health has said it's not necessary. The CDC has said it is. Do you concur with the CDC on this? Is that something that might change in the health department's recommendations? I concur with Dr. Levine. And we do strongly suggest that people who want to, at day three to five, test to test. Recommendations as specified on the Protect Yourself and Others page for the Vermont Department of Health really specifically say to consider wearing a mask indoors, only if you've been into certain categories. And Dr. Levine, you stood up here earlier and said, I agree with the CDC about universal indoor masking. Is this going to change the recommendations that are listed on the health department site, or is this language that we're seeing there going to stand? Yeah, so I never said the word universal, but besides that, we'll take a good look at what we have on that Protect Yourself page and update it accordingly if we need to change the wording slightly. Has anything changed in the past week? What factored into your decision to perhaps change the characterization of your stance on the CDC recommendations? Yeah, I described that several times this morning. Basically, it's the fact that our kids are back in school. We want to maintain them in-person learning to the fullest. We want to make sure that levels of community transmission of virus are as depressed as we can get them so that those who enter schools, those who enter long-term care, those who enter corrections, those who enter health care facilities, et cetera, will have the least likelihood of being able to transmit virus when they go into those settings. Were those the same points not true last week and a week before? Well, they've really come to the forefront with the fact that we've now got some pretty good data on our long-term care facilities. We had just this one recent outbreak in our correctional facility that we've talked about earlier, and schools are just reopening. So it's just bringing all that front and center and making sure that we can do as much as possible. Keep in mind the slope of our curve of increase in cases is leveling off, not quite plateauing, but certainly decreasing over time. So we'd love to see that continue, and if we can hasten that, we'll do that. Thank you. All right, thank you again, and we'll see you again next Tuesday.